Of Zen, Health and Lily Allen

Zen can improve your health. So can cats.

There’s this virus going around where I live, giving trouble to everyone; combine it with a lot of work, and there’s almost no way of avoiding it. There was a bit of luck in all that; the publisher told me he decided to delay the publishing of the book I’m currently translating for a little, meaning I had more time to translate it, meaning I could actually allow myself to be sick and not work for as long as I can keep my eyes open.

During that pause, I’ve read The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk by D.T. Suzuki. It’s a short book, and a quick read; and yet, it’s so full of information. It starts from the moment a monk gets refused at the door, goes through the acceptance, the work, the service, the humility, the koan the monk receives,  the meditation, the rules everyone has to obey… And a lot more. The book is also filled with naive, and yet so lovely, illustrations by another Zen Buddhist monk, showing all the phases of a monk’s life and the instruments used in Zen Buddhism. Such a simple book, and a wonderful read. And it helped me feel a bit better and do some more work. The feel-better didn’t last for all that long, but hey, every bit helps, and I have no doubt I’ll recover eventually.

Lately, I’ve been listening to some Lily Allen songs, and for some reason, the one bellow, if you pay attention to the lyrics, went quite well with the book.

Backup!

Never forget the backup!

It looks like my computer is dying (I’m writing this from my netbook). The Windows won’t start, and I have no access to my stuff there. Maybe I’ll be able to save my data, maybe not; Significant Other will look into it.

And, you guessed it, I was an idiot enough not to do the backup.

Now, don’t get me wrong: whatever was related to paying work (translation, editing and so on) is safe — already sent where it should be, mostly payed for, and while I was doing that particular work, I was always careful to save it in more than one place. When it comes to work I get money for, I’m extremely careful.

But. My stories, the photos I took, some other stuff — I made no backup of that.

It turned out I was pretty lucky: some other stuff I can get again, most of the stories were either already sent to my publisher as a short story collection (it also means I have them in the attachment of my sent mail) and some of them were published on my blog, so, if I can’t retrieve my data, I’ll lose one or two very short stories and some photos. Some of those photos were really nice, but it won’t break my heart if I have to lose them; as for the stories, I might be able to write them again — they wouldn’t be exactly the same, but it’s not the end of the world.

Still. I should have been more careful. I knew my computer was ancient and it was matter of time before something like this happened, and even if it wasn’t, I should have saved important work — and my writing is important, right? Right.

On top of all that, the flu refuses to leave either me or Significant Other (by the way, my computer decided to crash on his birthday), I can barely breathe, and this time flu managed to make my gums bleed. Ouch.

Rant over.

So, has it ever happened to you to forget the backup of the important (or not so important) stuff?

Enough Already!

I’ve seen my dentist 6 times in the previous 2 weeks. It was routine, changing the old fillings in my teeth, putting one new filling, and cleaning the tartar on the teeth. Cleaning the tartar was somewhat painful for my gums, the rest was unpleasant, nothing more than that.

Except that I’m tired of people repairing parts of my body. I’m not afraid of doctors or of dentists, I don’t have a dentist trauma to share (I do have a tiresome experience, but not a trauma), I’m just tired of the whole thing.

Don’t get me wrong, my dentist is nothing like this:

Or this:

She’s nice, quick and efficient. But, as I said, I’m tired of people finding something to repair on my body — and, while she was cleaning the teeth tartar, she discovered another teeth that needed a filling. I’ll have to go again, on Wednesday.

I was so hoping that the previous Friday would be my last visit to her for a long long time. *sigh* And if I ever put my dentist experiences in a story, it would be something quite uneventful.

Of course, I do hope that my dentist experience stays that way.